Salt truck ride-along turns treacherous for Burchett

Tim Burchett/Special to the News Sentinel
Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett and his driver were involved in a minor wreck on Friday when the salt truck they were in hit a "solid sheet of ice" and nearly slipped off the side of the road. No one was hurt in the accident that occurred on Haw Road near Tarwater Road in South Knox County.

Tim Burchett has discovered the perils of salt-truck driving.

The Knox County mayor and his driver were involved in a minor wreck around 10:40 a.m. Friday as the salt truck they were in hit a "solid sheet of ice" and nearly completely slipped off the side of the road.

"A big tree stopped us from completely rolling over or it would have been a completely different story," Burchett said, adding that everyone is OK.

The two hung out at the accident site for some time because the roads were too icy for rescue vehicles.

"No one is getting up here right now — it's too dangerous," he said from the site. "You'd probably need a helicopter. But we'll get out of here and we've got enough to stay warm, so everything is fine for now."

The accident occurred on Haw Road off Tarwater Road in South Knoxville.

The mayor had decided to go on the ride more or less on a whim.

Burchett said he couldn't sleep Thursday night, waking up at 2 a.m. He said what the heck, and a few hours later was riding shotgun with a work crew.

It's good for morale, he said, for the top boss to hang with the rest of the folks whose work often goes unnoticed. Plus, he said, it gives him firsthand knowledge about what type of equipment and clothing they might need.

"These guys are away from their families right now, working 20 hours, and we don't thank them enough," Burchett said. "When the rest of us are curled up safe in our warm homes, they're out here in this mess and soup."

Before his truck wrecked, the mayor had been tweeting away Friday morning and noted that he'd seen upside down cars, a salt truck in a ditch and "ambulances and people in a bad way."

"If you don't need to be out today, then don't go out," he said.

He was asked earlier if he'd had any close calls and said he was giving a radio interview when the truck he was in "got sideways as we were going about 8 miles an hour."

All Alone: Knox County Communications Manager Michael Grider might not have gotten the message that county offices are closed.

"At the office … crickets at the City County Building," he tweeted Friday morning.

Khan! Khan!: With the ice storm raging, many East Tennesseans likely found themselves screaming "Khan! Khan!" much like William Shatner in the second "Star Trek" movie.

"Khan" was picked by the Weather Channel as the name of the storm that has engulfed much of the eastern United States.

You don't have to have a set of pointed ears in your closet to remember the 1982 movie, "The Wrath of Khan," in which Captain Kirk and his Star Trek crew battled an old genetically engineered nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh, played by actor Ricardo Montalban.

Most memorable is a scene in which Captain Kirk is rejected by Khan in negotiation to avoid catastrophe and in frustration starts screaming, "Khan! Khan!"

Rumor has it Montalban hated the part and only agreed to reprise it if producers promised never to ask him again to play it.

After a day marooned indoors, most here feel the same about the ice storm.